OnPoint by Keith Ng

This has, as Nandor said, become a race to demonise New Zealand's youth. Not all of New Zealand's youth, though. Only the poorest, most marginalised, most at-risk ones. Yay.

When Clark and Key had their first exchange with SchoolPlus and Fresh Start (boot camp), I asked myself: Are those policies designed to help the kids, or are they designed to make us feel better about them being fucked up? With the “War on Taggers” (coined by the “delighted” Gordon Copeland), the nature of this race has become clearer.

This is not a case of 'children come first, except when walls come first'. Because if it was, it'd be pretty daft. $6m over three years, plus the attention of 250 police officers seems like a lot to be spending on walls.

But as Copeland's catch-phrase imply, this is not about the tagging, but about the taggers. It was touted as a national strategy, and it was launched by Helen Clark. This is a PR set piece designed to demonstrate to the country that Helen Clark is Doing Something. Doing Something about what? Oh, you know, those kids.

This is about removing the most visible evidence that those kids exist and ensuring that the community feel protected from them. But are the community's fears well-founded?

John Key had kicked off the game with his claim that “violent youth crime is at an all-time high”. It is. But violent old people crime is at an all-time high, too. Violent crime for every age group over 13 is, technically, “at an all-time high”, and the fastest growing group of violent offenders is... wait for it... those in the 51-99 age group.

Average annual increase in violent crime apprehension rate since 1997:

14-16 year-olds: 2.6%
17-20 year-olds: 2.75%
21-30 year-olds: 1.33%
31-50 year-olds: 3.54%
51-99 year-olds: 3.59%

Young people still commit far more violent crimes than people over 30, but the increase in violent crimes isn't specific to youth – it's happening across the board. Youth crime as a whole, on the other hand, is actually decreasing. 2006 saw the lowest number of police apprehension for youth offending since 1995. When the change in population is taken into account, that's a 17% decrease over ten years.

It means that the increase in violent crimes committed by youth isn't part of a youth crime wave, it's a part of the increase in violent crimes.

And the increase in violent crimes is questionable, too. The biggest changes in violent crime rates occurred in mid-2005 – when the Police changed over to the new National Intelligence Application database.

An independent report in 2006 found that the level of recorded crime shot up dramatically after 1 July 2005. Violent crimes, which was 3% higher than the previous year, suddenly jumped to being 10% higher. But if there was a real surge in violent crimes, it didn't show up in 111 calls or ACC claims.

The report concludes that “the increase in recorded crime is not primarily driven by an increase in actual criminal incidents, but by different recording practices associated with a new computer system.” While there is evidence that the actual incidence of violent crimes is on the rise, it's probably a smaller increase than the raw figures suggest.

(This research was done for my new column in the Herald on Sunday, a nice little fortnightly Fisk-a-thon. The second one will be coming out on Sunday, and should be available online.)

I appreciate that people have a right to be safe, for their property to be safe, and for them to feel safe. But the cost here is very high. Less tagging may occur, but more youths are going to be brought into the criminal justice system for longer periods of time. Youths who are already marginalised will be pushed further out. They will spend more time and effort evading and confronting the police. They will be even easier pickings for gangs.

And for what? Walls?

(Check out Kim Ruscoe's interview with a group of taggers for the weekend Dom.)

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The cops just can't get a break, can they? Even as they scoured the country for the medals, a lawyer picks up the phone and finds the thieves in a few weeks, then negotiates their return with the help of a reward put up by a Brit and an American. Their only success, it seems, was managing to not stuff everything up. At least the lawyer was an ex-cop. But if they don't catch the thieves, this would be a complete downtrou for the police. The obligation, as I understand the law of downtrou, would be on Howard Broad.

Fantastic story, though. I hope Comeskey writes a book, or at least a screenplay.

“Violent youth crime is at an all-time high.” - John Key (State of the Nation Speech, 29 Jan)

That's true, but violent old people crime is at an all-time high, too. Violent crime for every age group over 13 is, technically, “at an all-time high”, and the fastest growing group of violent offenders is in the 51-99 category. Boot camp for old people, anyone?

Young people still commit far more violent crimes than people over 30, but the increase in violent crimes isn't specific to youth – it's happening across the board. Youth crime as a whole, on the other hand, is actually decreasing. 2006 saw the lowest number of police apprehension for youth offending since 1995. When the change in population is taken into account, that's a 17% decrease over ten years.

Fiona Beals, a Education Studies lecturer at Victoria University, says that the way young people are stereotyped in youth crime debates has a negative impact, especially on those who are already vulnerable.

“Young people become pawns in an adult game,” says Beals. “Often the solution is seen as education, but an education based on controlling young people, keeping them at school, and limiting their opportunities can be more damaging than helpful.”

“Why is violent crime against innocent New Zealanders continuing to soar?” - John Key (State of the Nation Speech, 29 Jan)

It might be because the police are getting better at filing. The biggest changes in violent youth crime rates occurred in mid-2005 – when the Police changed over to the new National Intelligence Application database.

An independent report in 2006 found that the level of recorded crime shot up dramatically after 1 July 2005. Violent crimes, which was 3% higher than the previous year, suddenly jumped to being 10% higher. But if there was a real surge in violent crimes, it didn't show up in 111 calls or ACC claims.

The report concludes that “the increase in recorded crime is not primarily driven by an increase in actual criminal incidents, but by different recording practices associated with a new computer system.” While there is evidence that the actual incidence of violent crimes is on the rise, it's probably a smaller increase than the raw figures suggest.

“We often get [crimes] happen in this [summer] month that we wouldn't have happening in winter.” - Annette King (NZPA, 31 January)

More violent and sexual crimes do occur during warmer weather, says Pat Mayhew, Director of Victoria University's Crime and Justice Research Centre. While this can be partly attributed to tempers rising with the temperature, there are practical reasons, too. People stay out later at night, when crime is more likely to occur, and drink more, which also contribute to violent crimes. In the colder months, property crimes are more likely.

While seasonal differences can explain the spate of murders in January, it doesn't really need explaining at all. The number of murders in a month is very small, so even tiny, random change can appear to make a huge difference, when it actually means very little over the long-term. This statistical volatility means that we can't draw conclusions based on a month or two, we have to look at the data over a much longer period.

Analysts generally work out the long-term trend by looking at five year blocks. Between July 2002 and July 2007, there were 489 cases of homicides (including attempted murders, manslaughter, etc.). In the five years before that, there were 523.

It's pretty maddening to hear Bill Ralston mischaracterise everything that's happened in the past week, claiming that Cullen and Bollard are sitting on their hands and oblivious to the impending economic meltdown.

Did Ralston read the same piece that I did? Cullen all but announced a massive spending spree next year. It doesn't take much reading between the lines:

In summary, the global economy is facing considerable uncertainty, the US is facing significant challenges, while consumers globally are feeling real pain as a result of rising living costs...

Our low-debt, strong surplus fiscal policy helps to lessen the impact of global shocks and gives us more options in formulating a response if the situation deteriorates.”

By “more options”, he's talking about a few billion dollars worth of options. But those options won't be exercised until the picture becomes clearer. He's allaying fears with the promise that if the global situation doesn't improve, the government will step in with a fiscal response, backed by low-debt and big surpluses.

And lo! The final phase of Cullen's master plan will be complete.

It hasn't exactly been a secret. The stacks of surpluses were all building up to this, and while nobody predicted the US subprime crisis, a downturn was always inevitable. From the 2006 Budget:

Cash deficits are forecast of $1.5 billion for 2006/07, $2.1 billion for 2007/08, $2.7 billion for 2008/09, and $1.1 billion for 2009/10, in all some $7.4 billion over the period...

This Government does not intend to react to this situation by slashing government expenditure, thus making the slowdown worse. The fiscal prudence adopted over the previous six years, in other words allowing the automatic stabilisers to work on the upside, means they can now be allowed to work on the downside. This contrasts with the position in 1999 when the previous Government reacted to a downturn by such moves as cutting the level of New Zealand Superannuation.”

(Translation: The downturn is coming, and the government can and will run a deficit, pumping money back into the slowing economy in the same way that it's been taking money out.)

And now, this is the exact same line that Cullen is running.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, some kind of coincidence, or an excuse that Cullen is exploiting to break the bank. This – buffering the economy from global shocks by stimulating it with a massive injection – is precisely why he was maintaining the surplus in the first place.

Sure, he's been aided by fine economic weather, and perhaps he's dipped into the bank more than he should have these last few years, but the bottom line is that after eight years, he has genuinely left the government in a strong position to respond.

Now, finally, everyone can STFU about the goddamn surplus, and focus on the kind of response required, which depends on events in other parts of the world, which remains unclear. The risk of acting before the facts are in? From the Herald:

If you react to downside risks to growth at this point, and those risks don't eventuate, then you are going to have a horrible inflation picture facing you over the next couple of years. It's pretty horrible already," says [Deutsche Bank chief economist Darren] Gibbs.

“If things do turn out to be weaker over the next six months, [Cullen] can come to the rescue and deliver $2b or $2.5b worth of tax cuts.”

(Translation: If you spend like there's going to be a recession when there isn't one, inflation will get nasty.)

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And as Bill English points out, inflation is already nasty, and he places the blame on the government's spending spree over the past few years.

Thankfully, Key and English haven't joined Ralston's “let's panic some” school of economics. English is, instead, focused on the inflationary pressures caused by the Government's spending. If this holds, the days of inane surplus-bashing is over. Hallelujah!

Entrail-reading for a moment, I'm guessing that National is positioning themselves for the argument that tax cuts are less inflationary than direct government spending, and that they'll offer up a fiscal stimulus package with a much larger tax cut component (with less spending), then argue that it's more money in the pocket and less inflationary.

However, tax cuts are less inflationary because some of it is saved, and some of it goes on buying stuff from overseas – which kinda defeats the purpose of a fiscal stimulus package. But hey, let's cross that bridge when we get to it.

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This part of the coming election is becoming clear now. There will be a spending spree, and there will be a lot of effort to portray the spending spree next year as, oh, I don't know, “the last ditch attempt by a tired, directionless government desperately trying to hang on to power”, that sort of thing.

But is it? It's undeniably convenient for the government that a global recession is looming on the eve of an election. Not only can they spend big with a good conscience, with fewer inflationary pressures from overseas, but they (well, Cullen) can simultaneously blame America for the global woes and tsk tsk their right-wing economic policies.

I think we can give Cullen the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't engineer the subprime crisis, but the Government hasn't found itself in this position by chance, either. Cullen has spent almost a decade resisting the political pressure to splurge – with mixed success – but he has ultimately emerged from the other side intact.

It may still fail miserably, or even spectacularly, but succeed or fail, this will be Cullen's master plan, carried out in full. It won't be simple opportunism or the panicked flailing of the arms. If anything, this is the only part of this Government which still has a strong sense of direction and purpose.

It's also a reflection of Cullen's own theoretical and ideological leanings, so the outcome will vindicate or indict the ideas, along with the man.

The next budget is going to be bloody interesting.

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I've come around to thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, Tim Shadbolt is the smart one here. He looks, by all accounts, like he's on a collision course with the EFA. But while his troope of martyrs steam ahead, Shadbolt's life-raft is rapidly inflating itself. He's got no problem with martyring himself, but as mayor, he has a responsibility to his people – and he can't possibly go against the will of the people, can he?

He's absolutely right in his calculations, though – it will be a shitstorm, and it's lose-lose for the Government. But it doesn't mean that it's right.

Civil disobedience works by people doing something that's right, but illegal. By forcing the authorities to arrest them, they're confronting them with this contradiction. But not all illegal acts are acts of civil disobedience. Some of them are just illegal.

An act of civil disobedience has to address an aspect of the law that they believe to be unjust, and both Shadbolt and Moore fail in this regard.

For Shadbolt, his original complaint was that the law would stop legitimate third parties like the Invercagill City Council from campaigning on the cuts to the Southern Institute of Technology. But after realising that his campaign was at best borderline, at worst, outright legal, he changed his campaign to explicitly advocate for a change in government to ensure that it will be covered by the law.

He started out saying that the EFA would catch non-electioneering campaigns like his, then went out of his way to ensure that his campaign was electioneering, so that it would get in the net.

Let's get this straight – this is not a case of the EFA expanding beyond its intended scope, or of absurd vigiliance, as the Herald argues. Neither Shadbolt nor Moore are citizens expressing an opinion who just happened to be caught by the EFA. Both are explicitly campaigning against a political party, and implicitly campaigning for another. Both have the right to campaign as such, but are bound by certain restrictions. Both are deliberately and publicly flouting the restrictions, with the specific goal of challenging the law.

Of course, I might be being a little more earnest than Shadbolt is. Moral justification is a moot point if Shadbolt is just doing it as a publicity stunt for a completely unrelated campaign:

To be honest I think if I'd just gone there and stuck to the issue ... I don't think we would have got half the exposure that we got from getting involved in that particular act.”

But can it be justified? Andrew Moore's refusal to register or to put his name and address to his website, can't. The argument in the Herald editorial, is pretty simple: “Why does he have to?”

The answer is also pretty simple. There can't be transparency without some sort of bureaucracy. And transparency is good.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb here saying that we don't want secret campaigning. Secret campaigning is never – and I mean never – good. Whether they have secret commercial, religious or political agendas, if a group is trying to influence voters, but trying to keep their identity secret, it's obviously not in the voters' best interest.

And the only way to stop secret campaigns is through transparency, and the only way to enforce transparency is through bureaucracy.

That's why.

And the price for transparency? Name and address. Keith Ng. 4/100 Dixon Street, Wellington.

Or, for registering for a third party, this. You need two names (yours and your financial agent – which could also be you), contact details, signatures and a JP or solicitor. It's not a big deal. Even David Farrar has done it.

The objection to registration is even more absurd, when you consider that we have to register to vote, too. Is this, too, an “attempt to monitor political expression”? Actually, it is. It's to monitor political expression – voting – to stop votes from being cast twice, or by people pretending to be someone else, or in an electorate other than the one they live in, etc. We force people to register to vote to ensure that voting is fair; we force people to register or declare themselves on campaign material to ensure that campaigning is fair.

It's easy to just invoke the rhetoric of “freedom” and “democracy”, repeat, and claim that you have the moral high ground. But the point is that our entire democratic system cannot function without bureaucracy and compulsion by law. These things are, by definition, restrictions on our freedoms. Laws are, by definition, restrictions on our freedoms. But not all restrictions on freedoms are sinister, and they have to be weighed up and judged with open eyes.

Is putting names on campaign material and registration too high a price to pay for transparency?

25th December is also known as Christmas

I wasn't quite sure, until I saw it being reported on TV3...

Presenter: Today, the 25th December, is a traditional day of celebration across the Western world. To make sure that this is in fact the case, we bring you live to our Christchurch newsroom to talk to our correspondent there.
Correspondent: Yes, it's indeed the 25th of December today here in Christchurch. The locals here call it “Christmas”, and it's a traditional time of celebration for them.
Presenter: How are people celebrating Christmas there?
Correspondent: Well, many people are spending these holidays with family and friends. And... stuff.
Presenter: So, people are celebrating Christmas with friends and family?
Correspondent: Yes, that is correct.
Presenter: ...
Correspondent: ...
Presenter: So...
Correspondent: ...
Presenter: Got anything else to fill our 55-minute, no-ads news hour? Our orphan reel is only 25-minutes long, we only managed to get two stories from the zoo and we used up all our traffic allowance doing the first three YouTube pieces.
Correspondent: Did I mention that it's Christmas?
Presenter: Yes, I understand that it's Christmas. Can you confirm for our viewers at home that it is, in fact, still Christmas in Christchurch?
Correspondent: Yes. Yes it is.

Next year, for Christ's sake, take a holiday. (And making you fill a no-ad news hour on a no-news day is really, really cruel.)

Best burger in Wellington is at...

...Offbeats Originals, on Left Bank, Cuba Mall. The eccentric little place does awesome, juicy gourmet burgers, and also happens to be an “artglass, ceremics and collectibles” store. Go figure. I can't confirm if transubstantiation actually takes place, but damn, it is a tasty burger. They are superior to Burger Fuel, have less variety and smaller portions than Burger Wisconsin, but would still win on a purist, pound-for-pound burger comparison. They don't have chips, however, as that would dilute their burger purity, apparently. They're on Left Bank – they have a licence to be weird.

The most gorgeous barista in Wellington is at Ernesto's

Mmm.

Inner-city living in Wellington is awesome

See above.

Season 2 of Heroes suck ass

I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you. But it does.

The whole season 2 arc is half-arsed, with a rambling 10-episode set-up and a dry, 3-minute, “No, Peter, he's the bad guy.” “Oh.” climax which is the worst pay-off ever. It's probably the result of a villian who's really old, doesn't get out much, hasn't done a lot of work on his evil scheme and just generally isn't very good at it.

And as if master-of-space-and-time and 2x as-many-superpower-as-he-can-get-his-hands-on aren't enough, another deus ex machina is introduced to ensure that nobody on the show can just die.

While the first season was all about discovery and convergence, the new characters in season 2 get led by the collar and still don't do anything. Blazingly obvious questions arise – What's with the identical superpowers? What can the old generation of heroes do, apart from being shadowy? – and never even get asked.

I blame the unions.

What to pack if you're doing localised time travel in San Francisco between 1970 and 2007

Historical currency, forged ID, really old cellphone. Sensible time-travel tips from Journeyman, the series about a journalist and involuntary time traveller, played by Kevin McKidd (Lucius Vorenus on Rome , the second season of which was great, BTW). It's basically Quantum Leap transposed onto the modern series structure, with the long what-the-hell-is-going-on arc, a I-married-my-brother's-ex-after-my-girlfriend-died-in-a-mysterious-plane-crash relationship matrix, and the obligatory inner-demon. It's strangely funny and disconcerting to see him time travel to 2000, and to have Livin' la Vida Loca playing on the radio. The crackpot time-travel science (tachyons did it) takes a bit of suspension of disbelief, but it's fun while it lasts, which isn't very long, as it got the chop after the first season.

Linux is now sexy

After settling into my new flat, I spent a few days being a geek hermit, putting the Linux distribution Ubuntu on my desktop and two laptops, then formatting them all and putting an even slimmer version – Xubuntu – on instead. It was the first time I've used a live install CD – it's pretty creepy when you put the CD in, walk off, and come back to find a functional operating system just sitting there.

“Um... but I haven't pressed the install button yet.”

As it turns out, being an early adopter of Linux has meant that I had become a complete luddite. I started using Debian in 2000, and have steadily accumulated and built tools to suit my own needs; a handpicked, meticulously maintained, blazing fast system that looked like it belonged in the late 80s. Having shunned all the bells and whistles, I never realised that Linux these days worked out of the box and was pretty as hell. Having been a staunch advocate of the text console, I found myself powerless to resist the lure of 3D animated workspaces, with windows that zoomed and zapped all over the place, transparency and all that jazz. I would go so far as to say – and I would say this, even to Russell's face – that it's sexier than Macs.

Running Xubuntu also means that it's a really frugal system, which means that my laptop battery lasts more than twice as long. (No bells and whistles on the laptop, though.) Honest to god, it's really easy to install and to use. Try it out with a live CD – just stick it in and play around with it. Just remember that it's running off the CD, so it'll be much faster once it's installed.

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